In 1959 a Jewish couple called Rita and Benny Isen who had just changed their surname to King decided to open one. Rita and Benny: R&B Records. I read somewhere that earlier they sold records from a stall in Petticoat Lane but have no idea whether it’s true. For the first ‘few years the shop was at 282 Stamford Hill (now a builder’s merchants), and then it moved a few doors up to 260 (now Top Pizza). By about 1963/64 they weren’t just selling records, they were releasing them on their own labels — first the parent label, R&B, and then a whole sprawling family of others, including Giant, King, Ska Beat, Hillcrest, Caltone, Jolly, and Port-O-Jam. Their most bizarre label was surely Prima MagnaGroove, devoted exclusively to the output of the Italo-American swing artist Louis Prima (slogan: Stay on the Move, With Prima MagnaGroove). That’s Louis singing ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ in Jungle Book — the king of the swingers.
At first their catalogue was an odd mixture. Their only big hit in the UK was Irish c&w Larry Cunningham’s ‘Tribute to Jim Reeves’ in 1964. They did a bit of gentle pop, including “His Girl” by the Canadian band The Guess Who? which managed to get to number 45 in 1966. What was really important about R&B Records was that Rita and Benny were among the very first to release Jamaican music in Britain. Ska and rock steady. Scores of great records on pretty much all their labels, from 1964 onwards. Artists included: Laurel Aitken, Dandy Livingstone, Jeanette Simpson, Junior Smith, The Itals, The Wailers, The Wrigglers, Jackie Opel, The Maytals, The Skatalites, Lee Perry, The Blue Flames, The Clarendonians, Delroy Wilson, Derrick Morgan, Don Drummond, Stranger Cole… and many, many more. You can find the (incomplete) catalogues of some of their labels on www.discogs.com [and Tapir's site - JE]. While Benny looked after the shop, Rita traveled to Jamaica to meet the musicians and buy the tapes.
Until the late 1960s there were very few places in Britain where you could buy records of Jamaican music, and R&B on Stamford Hill had all the new releases, and not just on their own labels. So their shop became a mecca for young blacks, not just from Hackney but from all over London and well beyond. Barry Service, who worked in the shop from 1970 to 1980, says that when he started there the place was packed on Friday evenings and all day Saturday, with people buying music and listening to music — it seemed like a club as much as a shop. And Rita, with her beehive haircut, presided over it all, like a queen. The shop also became very popular — because they liked ska — with the early Mods. Penny Reel, who grew up here, convincingly claims that Stamford Hill was the birthplace of Mod:
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I worked on Sundays in a record shop in the Petticoat Lane area from around 1957 to 1960 which I'm pretty sure was run by the Isens as on a couple of occasions they had me fill in at their shop in Stamford Hill which mostly sold to immigrants from the West Indies. They may have had a stall at some time in Petticoat Lane but I worked in a shop. I can't remember if they used the same name as the Stamford Hill shop (R&B Records) or where it's exact location was. I wish my memory was better - it was a long time ago.
Name
Frank Scott
(2018)
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I worked in the R & B Records shop for a while in 1967. Rita and Benny were legends in the Blue Beat, Ska and the then nascent Rock Steady scene. Mick Ford was the Manager; he and I got on really well. Friday night was a riot with a packed shop and queues out of the door, all listening to and buying 'The Latest' at 6s 8d a time. There was a particularly strong demand for high priced white-label pre-releases that would be bought by the Sound System guys. and played There was Rita and Benny also had a record company with offices further up the Stamford Hill by the cross roads. My time there coincided with Bob Thompson - aka Dandy Livingstone - who wrote and recorded 'A Message to You Rudy' which is still heard regularly, albeit in cover form.
Name
Peter R
(2020)
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I lived in Stamford Hill in the early 60s I must’ve been 12 or 13 at the time, I remember the R&B shop and Rita & Benny. At that time I was a Simon and Garfunkel and Beach Boys fan, so you can imagine my embarrassment when I pushed my way through the crowd of Ska fans with pork pie hats dancing, to ask Rita for the Beach Boys Pet Sounds album......Happy times
Name
Colin Ricardo
(2020)
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The happiest days of my life were spent in R&B Records, week in and week out What became of Rita? I believe Benny passed away some years ago. Was just telling my Son all about them, then found this article.
Thank you.
Regards Nicole
(2020)
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I worked in the Stamford Hill shop around '66-'67. Rita & Benny had anglicised their name from Isenberg to Isen-King. May seem obvious but 'R & B' stood for Rita & Benny. I've heard them described as immigrants, but they were died in the wool Jewish Londoners. They'd had a stall in Petticoat Lane which had done very well. When I knew them, they lived in Winchmore Hill I think. I knew Bob Thompson pretty well (Dandy Livingstone) and he was their big star at the time. The shop majored on Ska, Blue-Beat and the then emerging Rock Steady, but was also big on R & B (of course) Soul and Tamla. Biggest event of the week was Friday evenings when the shop was rammed. That was when all the new Jamaican releases came in - plus a few highly prized 'white-label' pre-releases that were snapped up by the 'sound-system' DJs. I had the time of my life visiting the local shebeens. Btw, it was Benny who visited Jamaica to sign talent and learn/copy the recording techniques, while Rita ran the shop - well, until Rita found out how he actually spent his time over there!
Name
Pete G
(2021)
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I remember going to R&B Records in Stamford Hill to buy my Soul / Motown records in the late 60's early 70's. Friday's were very busy when the West Indian bus drivers and conductors came in to hear and buy the latest sounds from Jamaica.
Name
Andy Hardy
(2022)
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This was my nans brothers and wife. My great aunt and uncle!!! My mum when she was younger worked there!! She said it was always buzzing!!!
Name
Julie Brand
(2022)
SM: Tell us your memories of R&B
PR: Well R&B was a record shop run by a Jewish couple Rita and Benny Issel, who later became Rita and Benny King. In 1957/58 when the first Jamaican immigrants started coming to live in Stamford Hill and Tottenham, Stoke Newington and West Hackney they checked her. One guy went in and he wanted this record by Laurel Aitkin ‘Boogie in my Bones’ which was a bit hit in Jamaica but he couldn’t get it in England, so being an enterprising woman Rita King found out who produced it, rang Jamaica and asked if she could release it in England or rather asked if she could tell someone had a record label could release it, and this was Starlight. So the first Jamaican tune came out in about 1959 on Starlight – ‘Boogie in my Bones’ by Laurel Aitkin. And it immediately sold in the West Indian community – it sold out. And that’s how it all mushroomed from there really. By then Melodist Emile Shallot started the Bluebeat label and Densil Dennison and King Edward started the Rio label and Chris Blackwood started the Island label and Rita and Benny started the R&B label, plus other US stuff like the King label which mostly released non-Jamaican music. And like I said, everything took off from there. I went in there one day, into R&B when ‘King of Kings’ was a big hit and hearing them play it – that was on the Island label and that was a big hit in R & B – ‘King of Kings’ by Jimmy Cliff. And then you’d hear things like ‘Push Wood in the Fire’ down the market and you’d see the guys going mad, so you’d think ‘I’ve just gotta have that tune’ you know, and that’s how it was. Now in 1960 I went up to Stamford Hill and in those days west Hackney which was like Amhurst Rd, Stoke Newington side of Hackney, Upper Clapton, Stamford Hill and Stoke Newington and parts of Dalston Lane were all very Jewish. There were a lot of Jewish people - perhaps 30% of all people that lived here. The other 60% being indigenous white people and then maybe one Turkish person, a few Irish-Catholics – that was the demography of Hackney and this area at the time. In the 1950s and the 60s the Jews moved out to Essex and so did the better off, and so did everybody – there are now no people in Hackney that I recognise from my childhood with the exception of the guy who owns the vegetable stall at the top of Ridley Rd Market and the guy that runs the Fruit stall at the top of Ridley Rd market – their fathers run those stalls. I remember them as 8-year old boys. They were Princess May School, I was Shaklewell School and we had a fight – I remember those boys as I used to see them down Ridley, and yeah they were the enemy, they were from the other school across the road you know. At the time Stamford Hill was a Jewish playground, it was where the Jews hung out, you know. There was a ‘Schtip’, the Schtip was the amusement arcade. S-C-H-T-I-P. In there was Pinball machines, two racks of Pinball machines – twenty machines in all, and a Jukebox at the end, and the Jukebox had ‘Whole lotta Price’ by Fats Domino on it and ‘Ever Loving’ Ricky Nelson and ‘Hello Mary-Lou’. We used to go in there and other kids would play the tunes because we were pretty young and play a bit of Pinball. And that was where really a lot of Jewish youth hung out in those times. Hoxton crowd wouldn’t come up as far as Stamford Hill, they really come into Stoke Newington. In those days there were real divisions – like the postcodes now. There were divisions in where you could walk. If you were Jewish, you wouldn’t step out of Spitafields into Bethnal Green and if you were gentile you wouldn’t step out of Bethnal Green into Spitafields. The Fountain Rd roundabout on Stoke Newington Common was a dividing line because Fountain Rd is the border of Stoke Newington and Clapton and Lower Clapton was white, rough and Stoke Newington was more genteel and more predominantly Jewish. So there were these divisions that lasted right up to the mid/early-sixties. The thing that really brought an end to anti-semitism in Hackney was the arrival of coloured immigrants. Suddenly the whole ideology changed from religious to racial and anti-semitism more-or-less disappeared from public notice and race/racism became the focal point of white, working-class preoccupations. Stamford Hill also had a place – the E & A Bar – which was a salt-beef bar… you’ve got to understand Stamford Hill now from then was different, now its Hasidic, then it was working-class rough Jews; sporting men, gamblers, card-players, kalouki-players, boxing men, football men – and that was the crowd that was up there – the Schmuter-trade people, the rag-trade people. They were kind of comedy Jews really, they spoke a sort of Yiddish. My generation, the people that were there didn’t really speak Yiddish, but the parents generation spoke Yiddish, and the grandparents generation spoke Polish and token Yiddish. And from when the bowling alley opened, and because Stamford Hill was a focal point for Jewish entertainment on a Sunday afternoon when it was dead – you must have heard that Hancock programme about a Sunday afternoon, how dull and boring it was, nothing happened you know. Well it was like that, except the kids, the teenagers go out to Stamford Hill, meet your mates, play some Pinball, have a Luckquin [?!] in A-bar and go in the Bowling alley, which by then open and so there was something happening on Stamford Hill – there was really nothing happening in England in the grey ‘50s and suddenly things seemed to be moving. I first saw my Mods in March 1960. They were Jewish, they were Jewish kids and they were Tailors sons. The other thing that really separated the Jews and the Gentiles was the Jews had a Bar-Mitzvah at the age thirteen when they were required to get a suit, and their fathers being Tailors they had the pick of the new materials – they had the Nylon the Rayon, the Mohair, so these kids were dressed in these. These things that the Jamaicans wear, the suede and knitwear things – all the bad boys in Jamaica now wear them, but the Jews again were the first people I ever saw wearing them on Stamford Hill and there shops that sold them. And Kingsland Waste was thriving in them days – there were a hundred stalls there; comics, Japanese Paper-knives, Sarsaparilla stall, Ice-cream, thirty tailors along the whole street, a guy selling second-hand bicycles, lots of radios, box-television parts and a record shop and a comic stall. So there was everything that teenager wanted, so that was like paradise to us you know, we’d be down there every week. There was a guy called Don Brick, he ran a toy manufacturers…
[Barry Service – former employee at R&B Records arrives]
